A star sensor has become one of the most competitive attitude sensors in current spacecrafts due to advantages such as high precision, low power consumption and small volume etc. Currently, the attitude determination precision of the star sensor has reached 10″, and even some star sensors have the attitude determination accuracies up to 1″. High precision is one of key factors of rapid development and wide application of the star sensors. As the precision of the star sensor becomes higher and higher, the requirement for an accurate measuring method becomes stricter and stricter. A conventional measuring method is mainly based on a star simulator and a precise rotary table, a position accuracy of the rotary table needs to be higher than a measuring precision of the star sensor by one order of magnitude, that is, reaches sub-arcsecond scales. This apparatus is expensive and complex to operate. Meanwhile, when a star sensor is calibrated by the rotary table in a laboratory, the star simulator is used as a measuring reference, however, it is very difficult to provide a whole celestial star simulator meeting requirements for a spectral range, a magnitude and the position accuracy. There is a big gap between the star simulator and navigation stars in a real Night sky. The conventional star simulator may not fully simulate circumstances of the real Night sky, so that the validity and the accuracy of the laboratory testing may not be convincing.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for a method for measuring the precision of the star sensor and a system using the same, which may be easy to achieve and meet the requirement for the accuracy.